Stranded!

The garage people should really have let us know that if we closed the door of the courtesy car it would lock automatically. But not an inkling of this was communicated to me. Which was how I came to be standing in a remote part of a farm outside Edenbridge at 10am on Wednesday, without keys, phone or coat. With my poor baby doggy trapped in a temporary travel crate in the boot, unable to see a thing.

It was my husband who had dealt with the handover the previous week as the paintshop rep took our car in for its repair. So, now immediately frantic, I rang him on my Apple watch. Thank goodness I had at least a bit of phone coverage and I’d updated his office number though I could barely hear what he was saying to me. He, however, could hear my horror, I’m certain of that.

His completely rational response when I told him about the emergency was to ask the outside temperature. Yes, it was only 10C but the car windows were rapidly steaming up with Fergus’s breath. Strangely I wasn’t really receptive to my husband’s at times hard rationality here: it’s all very well saying this from the comfort of a warm London office but there was an emotional, sentient being trapped alone in an unfamiliar car and I needed to get him out. Also, I was getting cold.

It felt like an age until he rang back on my dog trainer friend’s phone - thank goodness I wasn’t alone - and gave me the options of an Uber driver coming to Edenbridge with spare keys or waiting for a driver from the paint shop to drive our car down, unlock the courtesy car with the spare key and perform a swap. Picturing an average urban Uber driver trying to find this remote part of the farm from just a TN postcode, I opted for the latter course of action.

The trouble was that the garage driver was in Sidcup and had to return to Beckenham to pick up our car and then drive down to Edenbridge. He’d be a while.

Two hours later, I was still waiting. “It can’t be long now, surely?,” I thought. I was wrong. A message came from John telling me that the driver had stopped in Keston to charge the car. Fifteen minutes should do it. An hour later and still no word. And then:

“He’s approaching Edenbridge.”

“Ah good. He’ll be here in ten minutes or so.”

I walked up to the field entrance to direct him to the right place. And waited. I waited so long that the local wildlife started to see me as a local fixture and started flitting about around me.

Eventually, I heard our car’s wheels approach tentatively on the farm track. Phew.

The driver was in a panic. Somehow his Waze app had changed to Hebrew “squiggles” and he hadn’t been able to find the farm, which is why he’d been so long. We drove to the marooned courtesy car and a jumped out, ready to free Fergus immediately. The courtesy car driver fumbled around for the spare keys, at one point thinking that he’d lost them. I struggled hard to remain polite and calm. Finally, he found them, pointed them at the car and clicked. Nothing. The key battery was dead.

At this point we were on standby to smash the courtesy car window to free Fergus and the driver managed to ring his garage and tell him that I was panicking. I honestly thought that I might be confronted with a dead puppy, after all the love and effort that I’d put into raising him. Obviously I was panicking! We’d been stranded here for 3.5 hours. After far too long he used the manual key to prise off the section of the door handle that contained the lock, turned the key and Fergus was free.

I unzipped the temporary travel crate that held him and he jumped out, tail wagging, completely unscathed.

As the courtesy car driver departed, I discovered that there was only 10% battery charge remaining on our car, not enough to get us home. Possibly not enough to get us to a charging point that was working. I checked my Zapmap app. There was a charging station at Clackett’s Lane services about 8 miles away. Aha. But surely that was on the anti-clockwise side only, and we were on the clockwise, which would mean a long detour to the next junction and back again? I definitely didn’t have enough charge for that. Zapmap was insistently showing directions to a place 8 miles away so I decided to trust it. What other options did I have?

Filled with impending dread and extreme range anxiety, I limped through the beautiful autumn scenery of a single-track country lane to the stated location of the charger. Somehow we had managed to cross the M25. I still have no idea how that happened but well done, Zapmap. The thing is that we were here at a bend in a country lane and I couldn’t see any chargers.

Then, oh great! A barrier with an entry code. I did not know the code. I parked up, trying to decide what to do next. At least I now had the car with the AA membership. I could call them if necessary but how embarrassing would it be, this great big electric BMW SUV that had run out of charge! Despairing, I caught sight of a passing van. I yelled out of the window, asking the driver if he knew where the charging station was.

“Oh, it’s just the other side of this barrier.”

“But I don’t have the code number.”

“It’s OK. I’ll tap it in for you.”

I had 7% charge left by this point and my car’s systems were screaming at me that I didn’t have enough juice left to get home or, indeed, anywhere and that I should make emergency plans. What would happen if the charger didn’t work or it didn’t accept my virtual credit cards or I needed to download an app to charge and I had no phone signal? All things that still happen with some charging stations. Happily I plugged in the car and it accepted my phone payment immediately. So, twenty minutes later, charged up to 25%, I set off for home. What a panic!

Moral of the story: always ask what you need to know and do not assume that a courtesy car will function in the same way as your own.